Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.

Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea of the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.

http://boingboing.net/2014/12/01/watch-wanderers-breathtaking.html/feed0Solar system drinking glasseshttp://boingboing.net/2014/11/26/solar-system-drinking-glasses.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/26/solar-system-drinking-glasses.html#commentsThu, 27 Nov 2014 02:00:19 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=348563
The Planetary Glass Set comprises ten glasses (one for each planet, plus one each for Pluto and Sol) representing the bodies of our solar system, very very very loosely sized to express their relative dimensions.

Very loosely. I mean, they didn't make Pluto the size of a giant fishbowl and Sol the size of a sports-stadium. Don't be silly. The eight planets are 10oz each, Sol is 16oz and Pluto is 4oz.

]]>
The Planetary Glass Set comprises ten glasses (one for each planet, plus one each for Pluto and Sol) representing the bodies of our solar system, very very very loosely sized to express their relative dimensions.

Very loosely. I mean, they didn't make Pluto the size of a giant fishbowl and Sol the size of a sports-stadium. Don't be silly. The eight planets are 10oz each, Sol is 16oz and Pluto is 4oz.

]]>

http://boingboing.net/2014/11/26/solar-system-drinking-glasses.html/feed0Harvard's crowdsourcing a century of astronomical logbook transcriptionhttp://boingboing.net/2014/11/06/harvards-crowdsourcing-a-cen.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/06/harvards-crowdsourcing-a-cen.html#commentsThu, 06 Nov 2014 20:00:59 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=343853
Simon writes, "I recently got a chance to interview and profile the people behind a collaboration between Smithsonian and the Harvard College Observatory who are crowdsourcing the transcription of logbooks for thousands of photographic plates.]]>
Simon writes, "I recently got a chance to interview and profile the people behind a collaboration between Smithsonian and the Harvard College Observatory who are crowdsourcing the transcription of logbooks for thousands of photographic plates. It's a massive undertaking that will give scientists access to a hundred years of astronomical data."

The project, called Digital Access to a Sky Century at Harvard (DASCH for short), is actually a collaboration between the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Institution, the latter of which has embarked on a much larger endeavor to crowdsource the transcription of millions of pages of archival material. The DC-based network of museums launched a beta version of its crowdsourcing platform in June 2013, and over the next year about 1,000 volunteers transcribed 13,000 pages of documents. After emerging from beta in August and opening up to the public, that volunteer list has swelled to over 4,000. Though it isn’t the first archival institution to begin digitizing its collected works — everyone from the New York Public Library to the British Museum have launched similar initiatives — its scope of work is arguably the most massive; there are 137 million objects spread across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums.

But in a world where Google has the technology to scan millions of library books and provide searchable text, why can’t the Smithsonian do the same? “Basically these documents are not able to be recognized by [optical character recognition] text readers,” said Sarah Sulick, a public affairs specialist at Smithsonian. “You feed it through a scanner and it can read all the script on the page, but for these handwritten documents it just can’t do that. We actually need a human for this to happen.”

Open the pages of Cosmic Tourist and journey across the universe with 100 thrilling pit stops along the way. Your itinerary starts with Planet Earth, makes stops on the moon, the sun, a comet, Mercury, resting spots through the asteroid belt, and many other cosmic sites until you end up 13,700,000,000 light years away at “Infinity and Beyond.” Each stop offers spectacular photography and fascinating outer space facts that are written by the BBC’s “Sky at Night” astronomers Patrick Moore, Chris Lintott, and Brian May (who also happens to be the guitarist and founding member of Queen).

]]>

Open the pages of Cosmic Tourist and journey across the universe with 100 thrilling pit stops along the way. Your itinerary starts with Planet Earth, makes stops on the moon, the sun, a comet, Mercury, resting spots through the asteroid belt, and many other cosmic sites until you end up 13,700,000,000 light years away at “Infinity and Beyond.” Each stop offers spectacular photography and fascinating outer space facts that are written by the BBC’s “Sky at Night” astronomers Patrick Moore, Chris Lintott, and Brian May (who also happens to be the guitarist and founding member of Queen).

If you’ve often sat under the black twinkling canopy of the night sky and wondered… What is that mysterious glow on the night side of Venus? Or… Why is the Delta Cephei, which is 887 light years away from Earth, one of the most important stars in the sky? Or… What are those beautifully bright beaded interlocking rings that are floating 167,000 light-years away from us? … then it’s time to buy your passenger ticket, er, this visually stunning book, which will captivate you with space travel for many moons to come.

Blood moon during the total lunar eclipse in April 2014. Dominic Milan / NASA.

When our planet passes between the sun and moon in the early morning on Wednesday, October 8, 2014, the moon—-which will be in Earth’s shadow--will appear to glow blood-red.
This lunar eclipse will be pretty badass, and just in time for Halloween. NASA has a great website explaining how and when and where to view this beautiful sky spectacle, and here's a PDF with instructions (shown below as a JPEG). For local times, timeanddate.com is a good resource.

The total eclipse is the second of four over a two-year period that began April 15 and concludes on Sept. 28, 2015. The so-called tetrad is unusual because the full eclipses are visible in all or parts of the United States, according to retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak. Weather permitting, Wednesday's eclipse should be visible to skywatchers in North America, Australia, western South America and parts of East Asia. The eclipse should reach totality just before sunrise, at 6:25 a.m. EDT (1025 GMT).

The aforementioned Mr. Espenak is known as "Mr. Eclipse," and his EclipseWise.com website is a terrific resource for eclipse-watchers.

Unlike eclipses of the Sun, lunar eclipses are totally safe to view with the naked eye. And if you wish, you can even view the eclipse while naked.

The bright center of the Milky Way comforted our climbing group before a midnight trek to the summit of Mt. Shasta, Northern California's massive volcano. The best thing about camping, especially high camps, is the spectacle that is the night sky, a natural sight that never fails to make you feel insignificant.

The bright center of the Milky Way comforted our climbing group before a midnight trek to the summit of Mt. Shasta, Northern California's massive volcano. The best thing about camping, especially high camps, is the spectacle that is the night sky, a natural sight that never fails to make you feel insignificant.

With a nucleus size of 3.5×4 km, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko seems like a mere speck. But Michel (@quark1972 on Twitter) shows what the comet would look like if it were gently set down in Los Angeles.

]]>

With a nucleus size of 3.5×4 km, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko seems like a mere speck. But Michel (@quark1972 on Twitter) shows what the comet would look like if it were gently set down in Los Angeles. I wish the city would commission a life-size replica as public art! (via io9)]]>

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/30/a-starry-night-sky-from-the-b.html/feed0A beautiful photo of the Moon and Mars, close together on July 5http://boingboing.net/2014/07/07/a-beautiful-photo-of-the-moon.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/07/07/a-beautiful-photo-of-the-moon.html#commentsMon, 07 Jul 2014 18:55:22 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=316609Jerry Lodriguss, digital astrophotographer, captured this stunning image of our Moon passing close to the planet Mars on July 5, 2014.]]>

The Moon and Mars were separated by 18.88 arcminutes from limb to limb (34 min 23 sec center-to-center) at 9:52 p.m. EDT (1:52 UT on July 6) at their closest approach.

Mars subtended an apparent angle of 9.16 arcseconds while the Moon had an apparent diameter of 1847.71 arcseconds. The Moon was just a couple of hours past first quarter at the time.

This is a high-dynamic range composite of nine images shot at one stop increments from 1/4 second to 1/1000th second at ISO 800 at f/6.3.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/07/07/a-beautiful-photo-of-the-moon.html/feed0Diamond the size of Earthhttp://boingboing.net/2014/06/25/diamond-the-size-of-earth.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/06/25/diamond-the-size-of-earth.html#commentsWed, 25 Jun 2014 18:09:46 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=314038Astronomers have found a diamond the size of Earth. The cooled white dwarf star, a huge chunk of crystallized carbon, is orbiting a pulsar about 900 light-years away, according to National Geographic.]]>

Astronomers have found a diamond the size of Earth. The cooled white dwarf star, a huge chunk of crystallized carbon, is orbiting a pulsar about 900 light-years away, according to National Geographic.]]>

The stratospheric scene was captured
earlier this month during a flight from
New York to
London,
11,000 meters above the Atlantic Ocean.

Of course the sky was clear and dark at that altitude,
ideal conditions for astronomical imaging.

But there were challenges to overcome
while looking out a passenger window of the aircraft
moving at nearly 1,000 kilometers per hour (600 mph).

Over 90 exposures of 30 seconds or less were attempted with a fast lens
and sensitive camera setting, using a small, flexible tripod and
a blanket to block reflections of interior lighting.

In the end, one 10 second long exposure resulted in this steady and
colorful example of
airborne astronomy.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/06/17/new-york-to-london-milky-way.html/feed0Violent birth of a star, as seen from NASA Hubble Space Telescopehttp://boingboing.net/2014/05/30/violent-birth-of-a-star-as-se.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/05/30/violent-birth-of-a-star-as-se.html#commentsFri, 30 May 2014 20:14:29 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=307266

It appears to be embedded within an intriguing swoosh of dark sky, which curves through the image and obscures the sky behind.

This dark region is known as the Circinus molecular cloud. This cloud has a mass around 250 000 times that of the sun, and it is filled with gas, dust and young stars. Within this cloud lie two prominent and enormous regions known colloquially to astronomers as Circinus-West and Circinus-East. Each of these clumps has a mass of around 5000 times that of the sun, making them the most prominent star-forming sites in the Circinus cloud.

The clumps are associated with a number of young stellar objects, and IRAS 14568-6304, featured here under a blurry fog of gas within Circinus-West, is one of them.

IRAS 14568-6304 is special because it is driving a protostellar jet, which appears here as the "tail" below the star. This jet is the leftover gas and dust that the star took from its parent cloud in order to form. While most of this material forms the star and its accretion disc — the disc of material surrounding the star, which may one day form planets — at some point in the formation process the star began to eject some of the material at supersonic speeds through space. This phenomenon is not only beautiful, but can also provide us with valuable clues about the process of star formation.

A Russian spacecraft carrying three people docked successfully at the International Space Station today after a flawless launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Our guy in space, NASA's Reid Wiseman, got right to work tweeting totally awesome photographs that masterfully convey the wonder and beauty of being, holy crap, an astronaut in space.

Along with Russian cosmonaut Max Surayev and Alexander Gerst of Germany, astronaut Wiseman arrived at the station at 5:44 AM (0144 GMT). They lifted off less than six hours before from Kazakhstan. Six hours! Isn't that amazing?

Photographer and filmmaker Gavin Heffernan shares some dazzling photographs, GIFs, and videos of a recent meteor shower that revealed itself best in the California desert, where the Milky Way is clearly visible in the night sky.

]]>

Photographer and filmmaker Gavin Heffernan shares some dazzling photographs, GIFs, and videos of a recent meteor shower that revealed itself best in the California desert, where the Milky Way is clearly visible in the night sky.

Gavin says, "I managed to get out to Joshua Tree to pursue some Camelopardalids meteors. Didn't see a million of them, but captured a few nice strikes with Milky Way in the background. All the pictures were taken on Canon 6D, 24mm f/1.4 lens at 25 second exposures on Saturday May 24th."

For Earth Day this year, NASA invited people around the world to step outside to take a "selfie" and share it with the world on social media. NASA released Thursday a new view of our home planet created entirely from those photos.

The "Global Selfie" mosaic was built using more than 36,000 individual photographs drawn from the more than 50,000 images tagged #GlobalSelfie and posted on or around Earth Day, April 22, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. The project was designed to encourage environmental awareness and recognize the agency's ongoing work to protect our home planet.

Selfies were posted by people on every continent and 113 countries and regions, from Antarctica to Yemen, Greenland to Guatemala, and Pakistan to Peru. The resulting global mosaic is a zoomable 3.2-gigapixel image that users can scan and explore to look at individual photos. The Global Selfie was assembled after several weeks of collecting and curating the submitted images.

More on the making of here.]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/05/22/nasa-releases-global-selfie.html/feed0Watch this awesome time-lapse video of the total lunar eclipsehttp://boingboing.net/2014/04/28/watch-this-awesome-time-lapse.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/04/28/watch-this-awesome-time-lapse.html#commentsMon, 28 Apr 2014 16:44:30 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=299688Video: Gorgeous time-lapse of the recent total lunar eclipse (April, 2014) by
Adam Block,
Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter,
U.]]>

Why would a bright full Moon suddenly become dark?
Because it entered the shadow of the Earth.
Almost two weeks ago this exact event happened as the Moon underwent a
total lunar eclipse.
That eclipse,
visible from the half of the Earth then facing the Moon,
was captured in
numerousspectacularphotographs and is depicted in the
above time lapse video covering about an hour.
The
above video,
recorded from
Mt. Lemmon Sky Center in
Arizona,
USA,
keeps the Earth shadow centered and shows the Moon moving through it from west to east.
The temporarily
good alignment
between Earth, Moon, and Sun will show itself again
tomorrow --
precisely half a moon-th
(month) later -- when part of the Earth will pass through part of the new Moon's shadow.

]]>

http://boingboing.net/2014/04/28/watch-this-awesome-time-lapse.html/feed0'Blood moon' lunar eclipse may or may not signal end times; watch it online with NASA tonighthttp://boingboing.net/2014/04/14/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-m.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/04/14/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-m.html#commentsMon, 14 Apr 2014 23:07:43 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=297554
Stay up tonight online to watch an awesome lunar eclipse with our astronomer pals at NASA:
Spring is here and ready to capture the world's attention with a total lunar eclipse.]]>

Spring is here and ready to capture the world's attention with a total lunar eclipse. The eclipse will begin early on the morning of April 15 at approximately 2 a.m. EDT. If you have questions about the eclipse, this will be your chance! NASA astronomer Mitzi Adams and astrophysicist Alphonse Sterling will also answer questions in a live web chat, beginning on April 15 at 1 a.m. EDT and continuing through the end of the eclipse (approximately 5 a.m. EDT). The chat module will go live on this page at approximately 12:45 a.m. EDT. Convert to your local time here.
A live Ustream view of the lunar eclipse will be streamed on this page on the night of the event, courtesy of Marshall Space Flight Center. The feed will feature a variety of lunar eclipse views from telescopes around the United States.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/04/14/blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-m.html/feed0From the Northern to the Southern Cross (astronomy photo by Nicholas Buer)http://boingboing.net/2014/01/27/from-the-northern-to-the-south.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/27/from-the-northern-to-the-south.html#commentsMon, 27 Jan 2014 20:53:32 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=283185Astronomy Picture of the Day:
There is a road that connects the
Northern to the
Southern Cross
but you have to be at the right place and time to see it.]]>

There is a road that connects the
Northern to the
Southern Cross
but you have to be at the right place and time to see it.
The road, as pictured above, is actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy; the right place, in this case, is dark
Laguna Cejar in
Salar de Atacama of Northern
Chile;
and the right time was in early October, just after sunset.

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/27/from-the-northern-to-the-south.html/feed0John Dobson, telescope designer, former monk and open source astronomy advocate, dies at 98http://boingboing.net/2014/01/18/john-dobson-telescope-designe.html
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/18/john-dobson-telescope-designe.html#commentsSun, 19 Jan 2014 02:21:21 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=281288Los Angeles Times has a beautiful obituary for amateur astronomer and telescope pioneer John Dobson. He died on January 15, at 98 years of age.]]>The Los Angeles Times has a beautiful obituary for amateur astronomer and telescope pioneer John Dobson. He died on January 15, at 98 years of age. My grandfather was an amateur astronomer, too; like my grandpa, Dobson used and repurposed salvaged or inexpensive materials (ship portholes, cardboard tubing) to craft his telescopes. In Dobson's design, "a simple, sturdy and highly effective wooden mount that allows users to easily point the scope at any spot in the sky" was the most notable feature.

His design was eventually embraced by commercial manufacturers, who advertise the telescopes as "Dobsonians." They remain "one of the most popular telescopes on the market," said Dennis di Cicco, senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.
Dobsonian telescopes have made important contributions to astronomy, including the discovery in 1995 of Comet Hale-Bopp, the farthest comet ever discovered by amateurs. One of its namesakes, Tom Bopp, was using a Dobsonian.

Alborzian, who had known Dobson since 1968, said he once urged Dobson to patent his design. Dobson refused. "He said, 'These are gifts to humanity,'" Alborzian recalled. "His goal was to open astronomy to the common man."

]]>http://boingboing.net/2014/01/18/john-dobson-telescope-designe.html/feed0Happy holidays from Saturn and its moons, and from the astronomers who study themhttp://boingboing.net/2013/12/23/happy-holidays-from-saturn-and.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/23/happy-holidays-from-saturn-and.html#commentsMon, 23 Dec 2013 19:04:14 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=276058
Saturn and two of its most fascinating moons, Titan and Enceladus, are the focus of a holiday image release from NASA's Cassini imaging team.]]>

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Saturn and two of its most fascinating moons, Titan and Enceladus, are the focus of a holiday image release from NASA's Cassini imaging team. Cassini Imaging Team leader Carolyn Porco writes:

We on the Cassini imaging team deliver to the world this holiday season ... what else! ... the gift of heavenly imagery starring the majestic globe of Saturn and its two most astounding moons, Titan and Enceladus. In this, our 10th Christmas offering from across the hundreds of millions of miles that lie between us and Saturn, you will find some of the most splendid and fascinating sights this historic exploration of the ringed planet has uncovered: the hexagonally-shaped jet stream encircling the pole in Saturn's northern hemisphere, the graceful shadows of its rings arcing across its south, the northern lakes and seas of liquid organics hidden under the hazy atmosphere of Titan, the brilliant ball of glittering ice that is the small active world of Enceladus, and more.

More about the image above:

Winter is approaching in the southern hemisphere of Saturn and with this cold season has come the familiar blue hue that was present in the northern winter hemisphere at the start of NASA's Cassini mission. The changing blue hue that we have learned marks winter at Saturn is likely due to reduction of ultraviolet sunlight and the haze it produces, making the atmosphere clearer and increasing the opportunity for Rayleigh scattering (scattering by molecules and smaller particles) and methane absorption: both processes make the atmosphere blue. The small black dot seen to the right and up from image center, within the ring shadows of the A and F rings, is the shadow of the moon, Prometheus. For an image showing winter in the northern hemisphere see PIA08166.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 44 degrees below the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 29, 2013.

This view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.003 million miles (1.615 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 58 miles (93 kilometers) per pixel.
The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Jeffrey sez, "360Cities' intrepid member Andrew Bodrov, stitching master of interplanetary awesomeness, has constructed this composite image (i.e. 'fake view') of the Curiosity Rover at night under the Milky Way.

]]>

Jeffrey sez, "360Cities' intrepid member Andrew Bodrov, stitching master of interplanetary awesomeness, has constructed this composite image (i.e. 'fake view') of the Curiosity Rover at night under the Milky Way. You can even see Phobos, Mars' own moon in the night sky."

When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image on December 7, 2013, thick haze stretched from Beijing to Shanghai, a distance of about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles). For comparison, that is about the distance between Boston, Massachusetts, and Raleigh, North Carolina. The brightest areas are clouds or fog. Polluted air appears gray. While northeastern China often faces outbreaks of extreme smog, it is less common for pollution to spread so far south.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2013/12/12/china-air-pollution-from-space.html/feed0How we know what atmosphere is like on a planet outside our solar systemhttp://boingboing.net/2013/12/03/how-we-know-what-atmosphere-is.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/03/how-we-know-what-atmosphere-is.html#commentsWed, 04 Dec 2013 00:53:59 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=272070WASP-19b is an exoplanet whose atmosphere is probably super hot and super poisonous — filled with methane and hydrogen cyanide instead of water.]]>

WASP-19b is an exoplanet whose atmosphere is probably super hot and super poisonous — filled with methane and hydrogen cyanide instead of water. This video explains how astronomers can even begin to guess at the composition of the atmospheres of far away worlds. (Bonus: A soothing elevator music soundtrack!)

]]>http://boingboing.net/2013/12/03/how-we-know-what-atmosphere-is.html/feed0Star-themed tees to raise money for astrophotography gearhttp://boingboing.net/2013/10/13/star-themed-tees-to-raise-mone.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/10/13/star-themed-tees-to-raise-mone.html#commentsSun, 13 Oct 2013 21:43:26 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=261582
Jason sez, "I am trying to raise money to buy better astrophotography gear, so I can take even better pictures, so I'm doing this by selling shirts I have designed."

http://boingboing.net/2013/10/13/star-themed-tees-to-raise-mone.html/feed0Asteroid named after Randall "XKCD" Munroehttp://boingboing.net/2013/10/01/asteroid-named-after-randall.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/10/01/asteroid-named-after-randall.html#commentsTue, 01 Oct 2013 13:44:02 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=259018
Holy. Smokes. Randall "XKCD" Munroe has had an asteroid named after him. Good old 4292 is big enough to wipe out life on Earth, but alas, its Mars/Jupiter orbit is boringly stable.]]>
Holy. Smokes. Randall "XKCD" Munroe has had an asteroid named after him. Good old 4292 is big enough to wipe out life on Earth, but alas, its Mars/Jupiter orbit is boringly stable. Still, there's hope it will decay eventually, and create the splash Randy deserves!

Amazing xkcd readers Lewis Hulbert and Jordan Zhu noticed that the International Astronomical Union—the organization in charge of official astronomical naming—was taking suggestions for what to name small Solar System objects. They submitted my name for asteroid (4942) 1987 DU6, and it was subsequently renamed 4942 Munroe.

I’m really touched. I spent all weekend telling everyone who wanted to listen (and probably some who didn’t) about the asteroid.

The first thing I did was try to figure out whether 4942 Munroe was big enough to pose a threat to Earth. I was excited to learn that, based on its albedo (brightness), it’s probably about 6-10 kilometers in diameter. That’s comparable in size to the one that killed the dinosaurs—definitely big enough to cause a mass extinction!

Wait But Why has a fantasticseries of graphs that aim to help us wrap our heads around the enormous timescales on which forces like history, biology, geography and astronomy operate.

]]>

Wait But Why has a fantasticseries of graphs that aim to help us wrap our heads around the enormous timescales on which forces like history, biology, geography and astronomy operate. By carefully building up graphs that show the relationship between longer and longer timescales, the series provides a moment's worth of emotional understanding of the otherwise incomprehensible.

Humans are good at a lot of things, but putting time in perspective is not one of them. It's not our fault—the spans of time in human history, and even more so in natural history, are so vast compared to the span of our life and recent history that it's almost impossible to get a handle on it. If the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight, 24 hours later, modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second. And if human history itself spans 24 hours from one midnight to the next, 14 minutes represents the time since Christ.

To try to grasp some perspective, I mapped out the history of time as a series of growing timelines—each timeline contains all the previous timelines (colors will help you see which timelines are which). All timeline widths are exactly accurate to the amount of time they're expressing.

http://boingboing.net/2013/09/16/enormous-timescales-made-grasp.html/feed0Excellent goals from an eight-year-oldhttp://boingboing.net/2013/09/12/excellent-goals-from-an-eight.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/09/12/excellent-goals-from-an-eight.html#commentsThu, 12 Sep 2013 15:01:14 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=255337This list of third-grade goals is presented by redditor Elbostonian as the work of his eight-year-old son. It's a rather ambitious document, but admirably so -- an excellent mix of stupid body tricks, theoretical astrophysics, identity development, culinary adventure, and mystery.]]>This list of third-grade goals is presented by redditor Elbostonian as the work of his eight-year-old son. It's a rather ambitious document, but admirably so -- an excellent mix of stupid body tricks, theoretical astrophysics, identity development, culinary adventure, and mystery.

1. Learn the gases pushed from Hyper novas

2. Drink 1 gallon of milk in 1 day without going to the bathroom

3. find if you are sent in a worm hole or traveling in time When Entering a black hole

http://boingboing.net/2013/09/12/excellent-goals-from-an-eight.html/feed0See a star explode with your bare eyeshttp://boingboing.net/2013/08/20/see-a-star-explode-with-your-b.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/08/20/see-a-star-explode-with-your-b.html#commentsTue, 20 Aug 2013 19:22:06 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=251325supernova and it's not going to be as bright an object as you're probably imagining.]]>supernova and it's not going to be as bright an object as you're probably imagining. Discover's Corey Powell has instructions for how to spot it (it probably won't be super obvious, especially if you're in a city) and galleries of photos, just in case you can't see it yourself. ]]>http://boingboing.net/2013/08/20/see-a-star-explode-with-your-b.html/feed0